The advanced air mobility sector has long treated aircraft certification as its central challenge, with timelines for manufacturers like Archer and Joby sliding into 2028 and 2026 respectively. However, according to Lisa Wright, founder of Landings and a real estate professional building a vertiport network across rural North America, the ground infrastructure problem is both more urgent and more time-consuming than the industry has acknowledged.
Wright draws a direct parallel to the electric vehicle industry, which produced vehicles faster than charging networks could support them. Early adopters faced range anxiety not because the cars failed, but due to fragmented, underfunded, and geographically uneven infrastructure. Advanced air mobility, Wright argues, is following the same path with added complications. Vertiport development involves land agreements, community approvals, utility connections, and energy assessments, each carrying multi-year timelines.
“All the focus was on the aircraft, which gave time to build the thesis and have conversations,” Wright explained. For property owners, municipalities, and potential passengers in underserved areas, the consequence is concrete: even once aircraft are certified, commercial service cannot begin without prepared landing sites. Developers who assumed they could build vertiport infrastructure quickly once aircraft were approved are discovering that lead times run in years, not months.
Beyond land and permitting, Wright identifies energy infrastructure as the most underappreciated constraint, particularly for networks targeting rural or semi-rural locations. Grid connections to remote landing sites can take years to establish through utility providers. Off-grid solar and battery systems require procurement timelines that don’t align with the urgency of early commercial deployments. To bridge the gap, some operators are exploring mobile charging units: trucks capable of delivering on-demand power to landing sites before permanent grid or distributed energy solutions are in place.
“Energy is still the real bottleneck,” Wright says. “Sometimes the timeline on getting that equipment can be longer than expected. But locations being built in underserved areas face energy constraints because of where they’re located.” This mobile solution is temporary, but it addresses a practical problem: if an aircraft manufacturer wants to conduct a landing at a site on short notice, energy infrastructure gaps don’t become a blocking issue.
For operators focused on urban or airport-adjacent locations, grid access is generally available. For those building in smaller cities, rural corridors, and underserved regions – the communities advanced air mobility is supposed to connect – energy logistics become a primary design challenge rather than an afterthought.
Because vertiport development requires years of community engagement, regulatory navigation, and energy planning, operators who started early hold positions that new entrants cannot match on short timelines. “It’s actually very difficult and time-consuming to build infrastructure on the ground,” Wright notes. “Anybody who wants to start now is going to take years to catch up with groups who have been ahead of this.” This dynamic is becoming visible at the industry level. The FAA’s EIPP program is launching operations this summer, and manufacturers are beginning to plan actual deployments. Operators who have been securing location agreements, working through community approvals, and solving energy problems in advance can offer something manufacturers need immediately: ready sites.
The potential consequence is a split between operators who can move quickly because their infrastructure work is already underway, and those starting from scratch. In a sector where aircraft certification timelines keep shifting, the ability to offer a network of prepared landing sites – regardless of which manufacturer’s aircraft is ready first – may prove to be the most durable competitive position available.
For communities and property owners considering vertiport agreements, the calculus is straightforward. Aircraft certification will eventually arrive. When it does, service will flow to locations where the infrastructure already exists – not to places that begin their multi-year approval process after the fact. The infrastructure being built now determines which communities have access when commercial operations begin.
